Jason 1

Gabriel Jason
10/07/15
UWRT 1103
Ms. Blandford
The Crusaders Identity
We all have our own identities. A lot of the time these identities are
influenced by culture, time period, the region, and environment you are in.
History has shown us many different types of people which all led up to us
today. Some aspects might not have changed and some may be opposite of
what they were. War has always been part of society, even before we formed
civilizations. Reasons for warfare often vary though. Sometimes it is for
government control, human rights, destroying threats, power, and land
acquisition like in the crusades. Except in the Crusades it wasnt just any
land; it was holy land.
In the late 1000s Turkish armies were conquering land from the
Byzantine Empire. The leader of the Byzantine Empire, Emperor Alexius 1,
sent a request to the pope for mercenary troops. The pope did called on
western Christians to take arms to help the Byzantine Empire and to take
back the holy land from Muslim control. This started the first Crusade.
The crusades have always interested me. History in general has always
interested me. I think learning about the past is very important. Religion has

Jason 2
also interested me. I find religion quite an interesting idea. It gets real
interesting when people fight due to religious conflicts and can be hard to
understand the reasoning. So this is why I chose the Crusades. I thought it
would be great to pick a side and try to understand what makes them who
they are and why are they fighting. For this project I am going to try to
understand the Crusaders since they are on the attacking side.
There are many questions I could ask but I want to do my best to focus
on why and who. Who made up a crusader and why did they do what they
did. Questions I could ask are:

What were their motives?

What made them believe what they were doing was right?
What were the demographics?
Did the soldiers believe in the cause?
Did it improved Christianity?
Where were the soldiers from?
What was the difference in Christianity between now and then?

By asking the questions above I will be able to narrow my research into

understanding the reasons for the crusades.
As I search for answers to my questions Im sure I will find a lot of them
in academic journals, scholarly research, and historians. I would really like to
find pieces written from people of that time period. These may be difficult to
find but I am sure they are out there. Also, I think finding a couple of
documentaries would help me understand the topic.

Jason 3
It is very possible that my search results will yield too much
information. If that is the case I can focus on a short span of years, the
typical soldier, or the politicians. Still asking who they were why did they do
what they did.
There is also a possibility that my search results are too little. Although
it is unlikely it is possible. I can look at what built up to the crusades. Also, I
can look more at the religion, Christianity, from that time period.
The goal of this project is for me to learn more about the Crusades and
specifically to understand why European Christians went to war with the
Muslim Turks to reclaim land they deemed important to their religion.